Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday May 06, 2010 @12:21PM
from the so-very-hungry dept.

medcalf notes that game designer Ian Bogost enters the debate about Flash by saying
"[A] large number of developers seem to think that they have the right to make software for the iPhone (or for anything else) in Flash, or in another high-level environment of their choosing. Literally, the right, not just the convenience or the opportunity. And many of them are quite churlish about the matter.
This strikes me as a very strange sort of attitude to adopt. There's no question that Flash is useful and popular, and it has a large and committed user base. There's also no question that it's often convenient to be able to program for different platforms using environments one already knows. And likewise, there's a long history of creating OS stubs or wrappers or other sorts of gizmos to make it possible to run code 'alien' to a platform in a fashion that makes it feel more native.
But what does it say about the state of programming practice writ large when so many developers believe that their 'rights' are trampled because they cannot write programs for a particular device in a particular language? Or that their 'freedom' as creators is squelched for the same reason?"

Just keep this in mind: Apple used Fairplay DRM to kill the use of WMA and DRM in the music industry. Apple's insanity isn't all bad.

Apple also refused to license Fairplay DRM, which ment that the music that you puchased from iTunes could only realistically be played on Apple devices (Quicktime/Itunes on a PC is not a significant exception). WMA DRM locked you into certain devices, but not only Microsoft-marketed devices. That insanity is "all bad."

BTW: Fairplay did not kill DRM in the music industry. Amazon [wikipedia.org] killed DRM in the music industry.

Except Windows represents a multi-vendor platform just like Flash does.

Which is incredibly ironic IMHO. We spent the better part of a decade railing against Microsoft for being a closed/proprietary system. As an Linux user, that seems obvious. I can get my software from any group (currently Ubuntu, but if they piss me off I can go to Fedora if I like - worse comes to worse I COULD go LFS), and I also can get my hardware from any group.

Microsoft is a step down. You have to buy the software from them, but at least you get your own choice on hardware.

Apple is the worst. It's their software, their hardware, and their rules.

Apple also refused to license Fairplay DRM, which ment that the music that you puchased from iTunes could only realistically be played on Apple devices

And that is exactly why we eventually got DRM-free music from the major labels. The labels were getting uneasy about Apple's unanticipated power in the marketplace.

WMA DRM locked you into certain devices, but not only Microsoft-marketed devices.

Which is even worse in many ways. What Apple did with DRM only affected their own platform. Microsoft, on the other hand, could act as a market bully and affect third parties. And it did indeed pull the rug out from under those third parties with the abandonment of "Plays For Sure."

BTW: Fairplay did not kill DRM in the music industry. Amazon [wikipedia.org] killed DRM in the music industry.

Do I really need to explain? Aren't we all aware of the history of these things?

Yes.

Ok, apparently we don't all know the history of these things. Amazon didn't kill DRM. Apple successfully persuaded EMI to drop DRM, and Jobs published an open letter asking them to drop DRM. The record labels were so frightened of the power that Apple was amassing that they allowed Amazon to sell music without DRM while still refusing to allow Apple to sell DRM-free files. It was a strategy by the record labels to hurt Apple's market share.

The part that mystifies me is that you want to credit Apple with accomplishing something that it did not do. Yes, Steve Jobs published his open letter. Then he promptly made a deal with EMI to sell tracks at $1.30 without DRM versus $0.99 with DRM. Then Amazon announced tracks at $0.89-$0.99 without DRM. Whether it was a conspiracy against Apple or not does not matter -- Amazon achieved DRM-free music at the standard $0.99 price point. Five months later in October 2007, Apple finally achieved the same thing. Did Apple fail to negotiate well in the first place? After all, it didn't introduce variable pricing until April 2009, but it got $0.99 DRM-free music in October 2007. If there was a conspiracy to weaken Apple, that shouldn't have happened. Apple should have been stuck with charging a premium until far later.

Apple settled for lack of DRM as a premium feature, and perhaps more to the point refused to license a DRM system that was already cracked [theregister.co.uk] because "it might be cracked." Specifically:

"Some have argued that once a consumer purchases a body of music from one of the proprietary music stores, they are forever locked into only using music players from that one company. Or, if they buy a specific player, they are locked into buying music only from that company's music store. Is this true? [DRJlaw - Yes, especially when the purchased music is worth more than a new player]***The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company's players and music stores. On the surface, this seems like a good idea since it might offer customers increased choice now and in the future. And Apple might benefit by charging a small licensing fee for its FairPlay DRM. However, when we look a bit deeper, problems begin to emerge. The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak."***Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies.

-Steve Jobs, "Thoughts on Music," February 6, 2007

Why? In my opinion, because iTunes $0.99 purchases were essentially tied to Apple hardware and only Apple hardware (unless you were a dirty stinking pirate), and DRM-free music was not. Once Amazon upset that apple cart, pun intended, Apple amazingly managed to renegotiate its price with EMI -- who you allege favored Amazon -- and who could sell music through Amazon to be played on Apple players (thus with no possibility of a lockout by Apple).

Whatever Apple's aspirations, Amazon broke the final wall by achieving portable, DRM-free music at the standard price point. Apple refused portability on questionable grounds, and compromised its position on DRM in a way that favored its hardware over any competing hardware. I see no reason to give Apple sole or even primary credit for freeing the general music marketplace from DRM.

Yes, Steve Jobs published his open letter. Then he promptly made a deal with EMI to sell tracks at $1.30 without DRM versus $0.99 with DRM. Then Amazon announced tracks at $0.89-$0.99 without DRM. Whether it was a conspiracy against Apple or not does not matter -- Amazon achieved DRM-free music at the standard $0.99 price point.

DRM-free files were cheaper on Amazon first, but the whole point here is that Amazon would never have been able to swing that deal if not for Apple. You talk as though Apple had the option to drop DRM and lower prices for years, but they refused because they were a bunch of greedy bastards. In fact both the DRM and the price points have been contractual obligations of the record labels from day 1.

This is not my opinion. This is historical fact. Jobs had been anti-DRM since the iTunes store opened, but

No, Apple wanted to not use DRM from the beginning, but the record labels were too afraid to do that (the selling music online industry was in its infancy, especially for the mainstream). Once Apple got too big, it got to call the shots because it controlled the iTunes Music Store (and thus almost all of downloadable music) and the record labels resented that because they wanted to increase prices. The industry only gave way on the DRM issue because they needed to create a competitor to Apple, so they did so by giving Amazon permission for DRM-free distribution. Then Apple negotiated and had a trade-off: they got rights to higher quality files without DRM in exchange for giving the labels the variable pricing scheme that iTunes now has.

Seriously, have you ever talked to anybody in the media player business? We *all* hate DRM - it's a pain in the neck to do well, there's absolutely no benefit to the end user (our customer), and you have to make ridiculous commitments to the content providers - about physical security of the keys, procedures for managing the inevitable discovery of workarounds, etc.

I worked on the iPod team, and later for a company using Windows Media DRM. You might remember that the original version of the iPod had no DRM

Yeah but that mean that if I don't take the pi^h^hmick I can play my stuff anywhere. If I decide to defect to some other player I can get the music to play (I might need to convert it... but that's a given). Sounds in my best interest. OK I can't give my music away across the Internet, but I'm not convinced I should have that right.

If Apple is outselling the entire netbook-ish end of the market, it's a problem. Apple sells well because of their hardware, but their lockdown on software is bad for everyone else, and if they continue to grow and take over device markets it's going to be a long, hard road for developers.

They also sell well because of their software and in part BECAUSE of their lockdown. What is annoying for developers translates to a better experience for consumers and better PR for Apple.
If you want to blame anyone, blame consumers. They are the ones that blame Apple (or any other embedded device manufacturer) when an app written by joe-shmoe causes the system become less usable. That is why Apple controls the chain so closely, because THEY get the PR hit when 3rd party applications effect the device rather then the application authors... this is esp true for systems like flash where people are used to seeing it work on their PC and thus assume that it will work just as well on an embedded system.

No, I think I'll continue to blame Apple. Modern tools like Flash have increased the quality and ease of software development because they provide common functionality support at a very high level. While there are a few holes in the Flash provider itself, those are not comparable to the damage done by developers who have to reinvent the wheel every time. Consumers don't give a damn what something was written in, and Flash has been one of those technologies consumers have glommed onto en masse. Apple shutting down Flash and comparable frameworks is Apple's fault and nobody else's, and it's bad for everyone.

Not everything, but no hardware manufacturer has the right to dictate what tools you may and may not use to develop on their platform. As long as the software winds up as code their device can understand, that's all that matters. Apple is way out of line on this issue.

Nope. The fact that something is legal does not make it right. Apple absolutely has the right to dictate what does and does not go on on their platform (as much as I dislike it). Their right ends at the device, however. When they dictate what goes on on my machines, they are very far out of line. The fact that developers agree to this has nothing to do with whether it is right or wrong.

Furthermore, I don't own an iPhone (and never will), and I don't develop for the iPhone (and never will), precisely because of the unreasonable restrictions Apple puts upon this platform. Not only do you have a poor grasp upon what Apple's rights are, your argument amounts to making false assumptions about what I own, and drawing conclusions about my character based on those false assumptions. Hardly a strong position you have, there.

FALSE. They do have the right, so long as they tell you first and then leave it up to you to decide if you want to play by those rules. You CHOSE to buy Apple fully aware of the restrictions, then blame Apple when those restrictions finally affect you in a negative way.

But that's the problem, they DIDN'T tell me first. They snuck this clause into the EULA of the most recent update. It's a little late in the game to be changing the rules, especially when Adobe invested a lot of time and money into creating an iPhone development tool which followed all of Apple's rules up to that point.

As an independent developer I have to spend more money to develop for the iphone since I must use a Mac and I must use Snow Leopard. Adobe allowed me to skirt this requirement by using Flash, which has a significantly lower starting cost. Lower starting cost = entry to market = lower out of pocket funding for iphone development.

Flash CS5 is the only product that comes with the Flash-to-.ipa converter. It retails for $700. The Mac Mini starts at $600. Last I checked, $600 was less than $700.

They don't have the funds to start a legal fight, nor could they survive apple's change in terms of services. That, sir, is a monopoly. Apple has a monopoly on the market.

Let's get a couple of things straightened out:

1) Changing your terms of service does not give you a monopoly in your market.2) Apple's US smartphone marketshare is 25% [theequitykicker.com]--18% less than RIM. How can you have a monopoly in your market if you're not even the largest player?

I'd ask for a refund on whatever it was you spent on your "education."

Put another way, Apple has no right to regulate the road developers take to arrive at a point, only the point that they arrive at. They are doing the former, not the latter.

Really? You are the arbiter of Apple's rights? You have the "right" to arbitrarily decide how Apple runs their own business? According to your line of reasoning I have the right to tell you how to make and spend your money.

So, from now on you cannot buy, or use, any products made by Apple, Microsoft, RedHat, Novell, Intel, AMD, NVidia

Which is why we are arguing against Apple's platform - if noone cares, everyone is worse off. So you can call us whatever you want, I for one will still argue that Apple's methods is hurting developers, and in the end consumers. If you believe I am wrong, or wrong that this matters, tell me why and we can discus it.Yelling "noone cares" is just silly...

So, what you're saying is anticompetitive behavior is perfectly acceptable as long as there are alternatives? What's your opinion on Microsoft? Are they "demons", or a legitimate monopoly concern?

When Intel was demonstrably shown to deliberately cripple the performance of source code compiled using their compiler for any CPU other than "Genuine Intel", which is part of the reason they eventually settled with AMD, that was something AMD and everyone else should "get the f--k over"? It's perfectly fine because if people don't like it, they can just use something else? Nevermind that many corporations licensed and used Intel's compiler and had their own products possibly reduced in functionality or lost business as a result. They should have just chose a different compiler, right?

Or, what about Microsoft? Sure, Internet Explorer is wired directly into the operating system. Sure, everyone is forced into using it whether or not they want to. Sure, Microsoft just so happens to be the OS on most computers. Ahh, heck, it's no problem - people should just get over it because they can always download Firefox, or Opera, or Safari. No reason to get your panties in a wad, right?

This isn't always about people being pissed at Apple for locking out Flash. And I agree with TFA in that people seem to be thinking of this as a deity-provided right. That's probably the wrong way to look at it. I look at it as the slowly growing and likely dominant force in mobile electronics deciding on their own what's right for the marketplace, and using their de facto power as such to control what happens.

We're looking at 1 million+ iPad units sold in about a month. As other articles state, they are killing netbook sales. They are well on their way to becoming the only viable choice in the market for portable electronic computers - just as they are for portable electronic music players - just as they are slowly becoming for portable phones.

When Apple has that position and leverage, that gives them the power to dictate everything about it. If they deny Flash, they are putting a strangle on a [proprietary] product. This is very similar to Microsoft and the entire Internet Explorer antitrust debacle. Microsoft was found guilty of using their installed base as a means of pushing Internet Explorer above all other browsers (even though choices for users existed), and they were also accused of modifying their APIs to be accessible and favorable for IE over other browsers. They were accused of using their market share as leverage against 3rd party OEMs by binding them into capricious and damaging contracts.

Apple is turning into the same beast. Naturally you can write in their language or make the choice to not write for Apple at all. You have an option...but a poor one. You either write for Apple using what they tell you to do, and address a market of 1 million+ iPads, or you write in the language you want (Flash, etc), and sell to a market that's getting smaller day by day.

This isn't "me me me" crap - this is an erosion of the concept of competition. It wasn't allowed for Microsoft, and it shouldn't be allowed here. Apple is taking away my choices as a programmer who wants to make a living developing applications. For now, it might not be so grim because there are other choices; look to the future when the market is just Apple and that's it and the future is much darker. (Ask the people who were waiting for Courier or Slate to be alternatives to iPad...so much for that...)

It's exaggerated hyperbole to the extreme, but your specious argument is tantamount to saying you get a choice of "death by strangling" or "death by evisceration and strangling with your entrails". In either case, the end result isn't good for you...but hey, quit bitching because at least we gave you a choice!

Your arguments and comparisons are predicated on Apple being a monopoly in a space. Smartphones, tablets/netbooks, whichever. This is not currently even close to the case. Until it is, i.e. "When Apple has that position and leverage . ..", you will be correct.

But as so many are fond of pointing out, they do not now control any market, with the exception of portable music players. Certainly not computers.

You may not like it but the fact is no one cares. Don't develop for Apple. No one will miss you. No one needs you.

But if they end missing and needing you, Apple will care and about face as quick as they can. So, if you want to see these things on the iPhone, go someplace else and make them. Get Flash and Java on Android. Make tons of killer apps for some other phone that allows the coding methods you desire. Hell, build a new phone. According to all the bitching here, there seems to be a good opening in the

Rights derive from agreements between individuals to respect and defend certain conditions. There are no natural or God given rights. Without society, it is meaningless to talk about rights: there is only power. If we agree that 'developing on any platform, in any language you choose' is a right, then it is a right. As with all rights, we will have to give up something to gain something, in this case, we give up the right to make a closed platform.

What I don't understand is why people aren't doing just that. Most of us program because it's fun, but it's just not fun when you're limited. Yes, when I program for fun it is all about me, and damnit, I deserve to be able to do what I want. That's why I use Linux:)

I program because it puts food on my table.

So... why are you people still developing for iPhone? Put your money where your mouth is.

That's exactly what they are doing...they are going where the money is.

But why are so many techies defending Flash "programmers". Isn't that about like defending people who could only program in VB6?

Um no. Sorry try again. The iPhone is a closed platform. Sucks for you if you don't like it. The free market will ruin Apple if this didn't work but it does. That's how the real world is. It isn't Apple coddling you every step of the way giving you everything your special little self needs to develop an application.
You are all so fucking entitled it's not even funny. I don't care if you dislike Apple's business model, but the sense of entitlement in these posts is what pushes me over the edge. It's as if everyone needs to drop everything for some developers on Slashdot who don't like the SDK for the iPhone and want Apple to tailor it for their usage, with the expectation that Apple cares about them enough for this to be a possibility.
It is so incredibly acceptable and a non-issue that you need to use the iPhone SDK and Obj-C to program on the iPhone.

That's exactly how I was going to describe it. I am solidly in the camp that thinks Apple's business practices around this whole debate have been deplorable, but I haven't seen anyone claiming they had any inherent RIGHTS one way or the other in the matter.

Not any serious developers, at least. I'm sure there are plenty of Internet trolls saying things like that, but if he's arguing against trolls he lost before he started.

I don't really think you guys know what you mean by a "Closed Platform". Flash is just as closed as anything Apple or Microsoft puts out there. The development tools cost more and the capabilities are stifled in comparison to native tools on any system that Flash runs on.

Sure, and you can develop for iPhone using open source tools; all of Apple's extensions to gcc or llvm are contributed back to the main distribution. And how ARMv6 or ARMv7 binaries work is certainly well documented in many places. You can (relatively) easily write a new tool that targets the iPhone or iPad from that information; MonoTouch, Unity, the Flash app packager and so on all did so, after all.

My take on the whole thing is "WAH" if you dont like it then dont code for the closed platform. There is a huge Android platform that would really like some more great apps to compete with apple's head start.

Plus android based tablets are actually already here (I have had an android based tablet for a year now. I installed Android X86 on a older tablet PC. works great.

I agree, you dont like it, then dont code for it.

but I dont see anyone writing Symbian apps with Flash. And symbian phone sales outnumber the iPhones and all android phones put together.

The Symbian point is an important one. While Apple is getting a lot of flack for this (because people just love hating Apple), this is pretty normal practice for embedded devices like cell phones. Crow, Apple is being a hell of a lot more open then many of the networks have been over the years. Ever try publishing something for, say, Verizon branded phones? I think this is what is pissing me off so much about this entire discussion.... people are taking what is a normal and sane buisness practice and, because it is Apple, throwing a fit.

I haven't bought it (and never will), and don't develop for it (and never will). However, that doesn't mean I shouldn't also express feedback as to why I didn't/don't do those things. You believe in a false dichotomy.

Watch the rest of my profession, and a large chunk of the general public, be pulled into this trap? Or speak out against it?

I want what the iPhone should have been, and what Android still has a chance of becoming. That is not going to happen if all of us just sit down, shut up, and let Apple take all the marketshare. There absolutely is a PR battle to be fought over this, and I am going to continue to warn people away from walled gardens as long as they will listen, until the only people left in those gardens are their creators.

Actually that's not a flame. The only way to download the SDK is if you pay to become an iPhone developer and even if you did acquire the SDK through other means, you'd still need a certificate from Apple to actually run it on your phone. The only other option is to jailbreak the phone.

You can download the SDK for free, legally, from http://developer.apple.com/ [apple.com], and use the emulator all you want for $0.00. It costs you $99/year to get a certificate to put the code on your device.

The SDK is free, but you have to buy a code signing certificate from Apple ($99) in order for software to be allowed to run and install on the device during development, but yes once you do that you can install whatever you want on your own device.

That's a fancy way of saying you have to pay Apple $99 just to run your own applications, even ones that you developed for your own personal use.

That cut both ways. By restricting what applications can be installed on the device by some form of vetting procedure, they also cut down heavily on the likelihood of malware.

So, by restricting what everyone can do, they also curtail the malicious idiots out there. Which, is remarkably consistent with Apple trying to give their users a non-sucky experience with their products.

Even Microsoft never made us pay money to them just so we could run applications we developed ourselves!

Actually... look up "XNA Creator's Club".

See, there's this hobbyist dev environment for the XBox 360. The dev environment is entirely free! You can download it and install it for free (as long as you run Windows), and run the apps you build on your desktop (as long as you run Windows).

You can even install the code you write on your own XBox! But to do that, you have to have an active membership. Wann

The manufacturer of your microwave isn't actively going out of its way to block flash. You can legally sell flash for the microwave oven; software installation is a chore but the playing field is level for everyone. You don't sign an EULA when you buy your microwave.

The manufacturer of your microwave isn't actively going out of its way to block flash. You can legally sell flash for the microwave oven; software installation is a chore but the playing field is level for everyone. You don't sign an EULA when you buy your microwave.

Sure they, most electronic devices with firmware, which is just about everything, have their microcontroller's flash memory locked so you can't read it out and then modify it. Nor do they publish any information about how you could write your own and will refuse (I've asked) any request for such info since it's "proprietary." Not really very different than Apple, but at least they provide SOME way to do development on the device. I'm developing for the iPhone and it's a very nice environment and very well d

Does your microwave producer actively prevent you from installing software on your microwave? No, they do not -- they may not provide you with tools or documentation, but there is nothing built into the microwave that thwarts efforts to install third party code.

Apple, on the other hand, deliberately and actively works to prevent you from running unapproved software on the iPhone/iPad.

Apple deliberately and actively do not sell you software that they don't approve. Apple has not, to my knowledge, taken any action against people jailbreaking their device and running unapproved software (and fixing security holes that lead to jailbreaking does not count as taking action against the process - it's fixing security holes). Further, developers can make web apps that run on the iPhone (see Google Voice or Bejeweled 2 for examples). So, no, Apple does not "deliberately and actively work to preve

So let people install software from sources other than the apps store. You know, they way I can add any repositories to my Fedora system, or even just install software without using yum or rpm? I am not saying Apple needs to provide support for people who choose to do that, and they could even program the iPad to warn people about a loss of warranty or support if they choose to enable third party software sources, but the fact that they are actively working against the installation of third party software

At what point did Apple come out and say, "We do not allow cartoons that mock politicians on the iPhone/iPad?" Oh, that's right, they leave out the details about their restrictions when you ask about these devices.

Completely false analogy. The correct analogy would be if Linus Torvalds (or someone from Red Hat or Ubuntu) went out of his way to stop Microsoft from developing Word for your Linux distro. Or suing Microsoft for not letting you create and distribute a program for Windows.

There seems to be some confusion here. I don't recall the argument being that developers thought it was a right, the argument was that it is a tool that is useful and can probably run with little effort on Apple's mobile devices. So it was perceived that Apple was deliberately stunting some developers. Now, I think Java's been outlawed as well so you should be just as upset about that. Now, as a consumer, the iPad is right out of the question as here we have two empowering functionalities disabled for no apparent reason on my device. And it looks like they're going to do everything they can to stop Java and Flash from ever running on iPads.

The outcry is not that Apple is revoking a right but simply that they are deliberately crippling a product... and for what reason? Well, Jobs gives a few reasons but a lot of people assume it's marketshare and money. I happen to side with the latter group and find that despicable under the assumption that it would not take much to get Java or Flash running on an iPad.

Couple the above with the fact that there are a lot of social games out there and lightweight games running Flash already that might have hoped the iPad would just automagically support their game and I think you understand why there's so much backlash for lack of Flash. It's not a right but it lack of Flash on the iPad is a wet blanket to many.

Couple the above with the fact that there are a lot of social games out there and lightweight games running Flash already that might have hoped the iPad would just automagically support their game

You just inadvertently stated exactly what I have been thinking all along... There are a lot of people who have a lot of existing apps written in flash. There is a lot of money floating around the iPhone/iPad app store right now, so that is where they want to be. What they don't seem to want to do is put any more work into all of these existing apps to optimize them in any way shape or form for the platform. They want to just press a button that says "compile for iPhone/iPad" and start rolling in the money...

It doesn't work that way. Odds are that you chose to program in flash because it was the hot field. There was a lot of work and money and opportunity in that area, so that is where you went. Now the money and opportunity are somewhere else, and you are complaining that you have to learn something new or do something different to get access to it? Sorry charlie...

If you are looking to follow the fads, expect to change brand names regularly. How many of you are still wearing your parachute pants?

The outcry is not that Apple is revoking a right but simply that they are deliberately crippling a product... and for what reason?

There are apparently a number of reasons and Jobs gave them. You may not like those reasons, and you may think those reasons are stupid, but I don't really see a lot in the way of grounds to disbelieve that those are the main reasons. To boil it down to what's probably the biggest reason: Apple *wants* developers to develop apps specifically for the iPhone/iPad because they believe they'll get better apps that way. They don't particularly want cross platform apps that have been ported over, because Apple's belief is that they'll get flooded with tons and tons of crappy applications that don't work well and don't take good advantage of their devices' capabilities.

Personally, I think a lot of this anger against Apple for refusing to allow Flash comes from two factors: latent anti-Apple sentiments and successful astroturfing by Adobe. You have tons and tons of people who, a few monts or a year ago, would be complaining loudly about how Flash is a horrible blight on the free Internet, and instead today they're complaining about Apple's evil plot to damage the beautiful and perfect Flash platform by forcing people to use the terrible proprietary H264 format. It's kind of dumb.

If you want to complain about Apple's lock-down, I say go ahead, but pick some better examples. Let's talk about the fact that they're still using DRM on their video purchases. Let's talk about how they rejected the Google Voice app. Let's talk about how you can't put the iPhone or iPad into "disk mode" and copy your files on and off. Those are all instances where Apple is actually restricting functionality. But Flash? Apple's doing us a favor. They're not saying, "You can't build an application that does [such and such]." They're saying you can't build an application using a crappy tool that crashes constantly and causes everyone various problems.

Sorry, I don't think that Flash on the iPad is quite at the same level as freedom of speech. My Sony TV also doesn't support playing Flash video, nor does the GPS unit in my car. My firewall at work doesn't decode Flash either. My rights have not been violated by any of this.

Bogust suggests that cross-platform software may be making developers lazy, and turning software into one big cross-platform monoculture.

That may be true, but he's missing the real issue. As long as those products are viewed as some sort of computing device, one expects them to do what computing devices do, and the hardware is capable of that. Computing devices, those that are Turing complete, are general purpose. The platform may impose constraints like speed and memory - consider them to be challenges. (limitations by another name)

No, the real issue here is that one buys a piece of hardware which is a general purpose computing device, with very livable hardware constraints.THEN the provider artificially constrains that system.

Here's the issue another way...We're used to buying physical things, which become ours, and we can do with as we please.We're used to buying books, movies, and music, and understand that we're not supposed to make illegitimate copies of them. (The question of what constitutes "illegitimate" is a quagmire, of course.)

More and more physical things come with embedded computing devices. Those embedded computing devices run software. Those who wrote the software are making more obvious limitations upon the "permissible" use of that hardware that is shipped with their software.

The iStuff wasn't the beginning of this trend, merely the current, most blatant example. But remember, it's getting hard to find any item of significance that doesn't have some sort of embedded computing these days. Imagine if practically everything you buy comes with license restrictions. artificially limiting what you can do with the product, enhancing the makers' revenue streams, etc. Since I have "car analogy" in my signature, imagine a car (with built-in GPS, of course) that starts bucking, misfiring, and generally misbehaving when you drive into a non-dealer repair or aftermarket accessory shop.

Why does this strike me that this is more about a bunch of so-called, "developers," who are getting all huffy about not being able to easily whack out Whack-A-Mole and Fart apps for the i(Pad|Touch|Phone), than about a true fight for a "right" to develop as you please? So develop stuff in Flash -- you just won't be able to publish it via these devices. Why is this a big surprise? It's not as if Apple's hidden the fact that Flash isn't supported. It's not like you USED to be able to use it and now you can't -- they've been VERY open about their dick-waving with Adobe.

Hey -- I want it to have Flash, too. I'd like to have a Ferrari, but it's just not in the cards, ya know?

A million baby entrepreneurs thought that the iPad would SURELY have to allow the use of Flash and they were already counting the stacks of bills in their minds garnered from the various apps they were going to whack out in a hurry using Flash; now that dream has been shattered and they're getting all surly about it. Wah.

It's not as if Apple's hidden the fact that Flash isn't supported. It's not like you USED to be able to use it and now you can't -- they've been VERY open about their dick-waving with Adobe.

This also falls on Adobe -- it's not as if they've been able to run full-fledged Flash content at production quality on any mobile device yet either. I have to admit to a sense of teapot-tempest over "Apple sez you can't have what doesn't even exist yet!"

And w.r.t. the closed/open meme-wars going on: I decidedly don't hear the sounds of these same developers chucking their {PS3,Wii,XBox}'es into the dumpster over their "ev1l closed platformedness." Console platforms have traditionally had heavy restrictio

Have you played some of the Flash games on websites like Newgrounds? Some of them are truly amazing games -- visually, stylistically, and from gameplay perspectives. Back when Adobe was doing their Flash compiler beta testing, developers of some of those games actually ported them to the iPhone and sold them, such as Canabalt (Newgrounds [newgrounds.com], iTunes store [apple.com]). (I'm surprised its still on the iTunes store, actually. Apple never has been consistent about implementing their rules, though...)

First off, IANAL but, In the US, we have anti-trust laws designed to stop companies from doing this kind of stuff. The don't, necessarily, require the company to have X% market-share before some of the laws apply. Has Apple crossed the line here? I don't know, I guess we'll find out when the recently announced legal issues resolve themselves. The point is that there are laws that limit how much a company can control what you do with a product you've purchase from them even when it comes to your future use of that product with their services. A prime example is in the automotive industry. Car makers aren't allowed to just void your warranty for not using "Ford" brand gasoline; "Ford" brand tires; "Ford" brand spark plugs; etc. They don't get to void the warranty just because you installed an after-market tail pipe or radio. From my perspective, I can see them having the right to refuse to host a Flash plug-in on the iTunes store (though, Microsoft's recent issues in the EU with providing a list of alternative browsers might suggest possible issues for Apple in the EU) but the thing I see as most contentious would be their refusal to allow anyone to install software onto the device that isn't provided through iTunes and their, active, banning of users that jailbreak their device. This is the behavior that I can see the US government/courts coming down hard on.

Yes, Nintendo and Sega both used to have rules for the NES and SMS. They were ruled illegal, and Game Genie and Accolade were allowed to make Nintendo and Sega games/peripherals without a license. A judge even threatened to take Sega's trademark away for flagrant abuse of the court. (The Sega would only boot games where the first bytes were "SEGA" and so third party games also needed that, and Sega sued for trademark and copyright violation for copying "SEGA") Of course, the DMCA did a full 180 on copyr

I don't consider it a misunderstanding over their "right", but a complete lack of understanding of the platform for which they want to develop. There's a lost art of having to program devices with limited memory and energy budgets. Thanks to the desktop, the solution wasn't to code more efficiently and have the developer bear the pain, it was just far easier to push it to the user in the form of more memory and faster processors. And yes, more energy.

This can't be done on tiny devices, and the write-once run everywhere mantra comes at a hefty expense. I also agree with Jobs' point that high level abstractions and languages *do* reduce the application down to the lowest common denominator.

At some point, Adobe and their peers will want to start putting their libraries inside the iPhone OS. We've all seen how intrusive and bloated Adobe Reader has become, that's just the kind of behavior I hope to avoid on my phone. Sure, Flash would be nice, but am I willing to get it at the cost of allowing Adobe to modify files in the OS? The alternative is that these Flash applications carry the necessary libraries with them and these simply Flash games are now pushing tens of megabytes in girth.

Furthermore, where does it end? They permit Flash, then Java and hey what about.NET/CLR for applications? How about Visual Basic on the iPhone? Wait, that we've left out the Fortran programmers so we need to support them as well.

Here's an idea. Instead of being a "Flash Developer", how about you just be a developer and understand that a language is a tool and like all tools, there's a right one for the job. Tiny device programming is a different art form, one of where less really is more and it isn't necessarily an easy world in which to work.

Yes, it's true that Flash is not a right. And yes, it's also true that by "choosing Apple" you're choosing a "closed system". But none of it get to the core issue.Why do people write software? Most people (aside from those that just do it for their own jollies) write software so that others can use it and share in its benefit. As for software corporations, there's a big financial aspect tied to the motivations, but the want for mass-consumption is still there.

In this case, Adobe being such a crybaby about this situation is both an insult to Apple, but also a very big compliment. There is so much fear that the iPad will revolutionize... something (Granted I don't know what, as the most entertaining thing I've managed to get out of it is tapping flying Dragonballs to a musical beat) and become so ubuiquitous, that Adobe not being able to take part in it the way they've currently done with so many other forms of computing environments makes them throw e-hissy fits.

But it's neither party's fault. Apple could just as easily fail, like so many others before them (including their younger self) at creating a tablet like device, and this entire argument would be moot. On the flip side, were flash able to take more than just the left mouse button (wait, why doesn't Apple like Flash again?) and anything other than Tab as an input; had Flash actually overran the internet, I'm sure Apple would have been more than happy to play along or make exceptions.

I know there will be many who would argue whether the latter were true, but just look at Visa. They only went public _two_ years ago, but even before then they were THE name in plastic. Discover, MasterCard, AmEx? You had to ask if those would be accepted, after you saw a Visa logo on the door. There's nothing wrong with programming for a "closed" system, as long as everyone else is using it. But right now Apple just doesn't think Adobe has enough market share to be worth being "Open" for, and Adobe is scared Apple is on its way to becoming the next Visa.

I don't think the problem is that apple is trampling someone's "rights". I think it is more that apple is just continuing to act like a dick. (Whcih shouldn't be a surprise, since the dickery of Steve Jobs is well documented.)

I can't speak for others, but my personal beef is that apple is putting restrictions on the development process instead of the result.

I have ZERO problem if they want to put restrictions on the result. "Your binary must adhere to these rules, and behave thusly." That's fine.

I take great exception if they say how I can make it though. Saying "you can't use these tools" is silly. They shouldn't care what tools are used. To me, saying "you can't submit anything that was written in flash" makes exactly as much sense as saying "You can't submit anything that wasn't written by someone with blond hair."

(And yes, I'm equally insensed about Java, Unity, or anything else, as I am about Flash.)

Also I'm mostly annoyed by the obvious hippocracy that it shows on the part of apple. (Which again, really shouldn't surprise me by now, but meh.) Because as countless people have already pointed out, it basically outlaws a very large percentage of stuff that is already in the app store. No one REALLY expects apple to come down too hard on the non-flash things here. They are basically just issuing a law that makes it so EVERYONE who uses any kind of middleware is illegal, so they can pick and choose their enforcement to suit their whims. The app store approval process already has a wide reputation for capriousness. They already pick and choose apps to ban inconsistently, frequently refuse to provide reasons, and refuse to provide any real recourse, or point of contact. This is only going to make this problem worse.

So yeah. I don't get mad at apple because I feel I have some "right" to use flash in particular. But I do feel that I have a "right" to develop using whatever tools I see fit, whether they be Adobe's products, or blond-haired employees, and that apple should get out of my business, and only concern themselves with my product.

I agree 100% with your concern, that this is a scummy thing to do, that there is quesitonal moral ground for them to get involved with the process. But there is a legitimate motivation buried in there. Apple doesn't want to be in a situation where developers are relying on 3rd parties to push API enhancements. Imagine if when Apple released the 3GS a significant fraction of their developers couldn't write apps that used the compass, all because Adobe didn't get around to it for a week (a month? ever?).

I don't think Apple's interested in having grounds to censor any particular app (they do that already), but making sure they can change things without worrying about 3rd party influence.

it's not silly at all when the actual goal is to stifle innovation and competition by artificially raising the cost for developers to sell apps on other platforms like Android, WebOS, and windows mobile.

this has nothing to do with app quality, if it did they would just continue to enforce or tighten up quality requirements before approving.

The more I read and talk to people (developers other than myself) about this issue the more I am beginning to realize that the outrage is more from companies who develop content for other larger companies than from developers. Most developers realize that they will have to learn new technologies, APIs, languages, paradigms, etc in there professional careers. In fact most developers expect things to change. From C to C++, Win32/MFC to.NET, Carbon to Cocoa (the list could go on) developers have been updating and reinventing themselves constantly to maintain viability.

I think the outrage and expectation is coming from the media design and development companies used by large commercial companies to create web and kiosk applications. They do not want to spend the dollars to train there current staff on the new technologies and do not want to hire the talent necessary to move forward in the new platform ecosystem. They want the current set of technical expertise they have to remain eternally viable. Flash is the crutch that many of these types of companies lean on. It allows them the biggest bang for there buck and reduces the risk to them. These companies have nice work flows set up around flash and a huge set of already written action script code on which the can leverage new product on regardless of platform quickly.

I think, the complaining and outrage will continue for the near future as these companies reorganize and rebuild there cpodebases to leverage the new technologies and platforms.

I find that most "programmers" that jumped on the internet bandwagon because of hype, are only capable of cutting and pasting code from Google into ready made frameworks. Having your framework yanked out from under you must be really scary in that case.

What it boils down to is this. The free market Slashdotter's love so much? It is defining the Apple turf. The App Store is fine and it doesn't need you to write applications for it. In a free market, if there really were so many issues with Apple's lockdown, Apple would be forced to open up a bit. But they aren't. Because people still work with them. And that is how the free market works. Making Apple open up isn't a free market, it's the opposite. But of course on Slashdot, "free market" is misunderstood t

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding your point, but a "right" is not a "well-established social norm". A right is a thing you can do that compels no one else to do anything, nor prevents them from exercising their own rights of the same kind. Your right to use your property any way you like doesn't prevent me from doing the same with my property. In other words, a right is something for which you cannot justly be punished. It is one of the four controls of societal interaction, along with a privilege (which you are granted immunity from punishment for, even if it creates an obligation on someone else or in some way infringes another's rights), a duty (which you can be justly punished for not doing) and a prohibition (which you may not do without facing at least the risk of punishment).

A right absolutely isn't a well established social norm. At least, it's not supposed to be. A right is supposed to be something that is illegal for the government to take away from you because all humans deserve it. Consider segregated schools. The well-established social norm at the time was to send the black kids to the crappy backwoods school and the white kids to the best mommy and daddy could afford. The norm of "seperate but equal" was established by the courts. Then the Supreme Court finally sq

That one day, little iPhones, and little Android phones, may one day access the same content.

That was, essentially, Steve Jobs argument in his letter slamming Flash. His view is that the Web should be based on standards.

The truth is Flash is not a standard, it's a convention. A huge amount of Web content may be in Flash, but it's a closed system. Only one company, Adobe, decides how it works. Ten years ago you could say the same thing about RealPlayer. Shouldn't the iPhone support Real video? What about ActiveX?

The iPhone platform is closed, sure. But it's not delivering content to others, it happens to include a way to access web content. If it does a poor job of that the market will reject it, but the only ones who seem up in arms are Flash developers who are mad about their favorite tools not working on some shiny, popular platform.

it's still a strawman, because the argument isn't that developers have a right to develop iPhone apps in Flash or Java. It's that limiting how developers can use your device makes your product weaker.

Apple is well within their rights to deny 3rd party development environments and to cripple their products as much as they like. And users are certainly free to purchase as many iPhones/iPads/iGlasses as they can afford. But independent developers play an important role in the success of such products and th

And even the fanboys must know this is true. The ONLY people who take Apple desktops/laptops seriously are the people who NEED to run photoshop

This hasn't been true for a decade, which is why five years ago Apple stopped using LCD monitors on their laptops and iMacs that were easily calibrated for true colors. Photographs whined a bit, and Apple's market share continued to grow.